Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reports that throughout Obama’s presidency, liberal comedian Jon Stewart was “summoned” to the White House for “secret...visits” with the president, an example of how the administration took “unusual steps to cultivate Daily Show comic.” Samuelsohn tries to soften Stewart’s far-left politics as merely being “center-left” mixed with a “populist streak heavy on fiscal responsibility, good government and fighting for the little guy.”
Jon Stewart
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 26, 2015 | 4:34 PM EDT
Appearing on Fox News’ Media Buzz, David Zurawik, television and media critic for the Baltimore Sun, hammered President Obama over his relationship with the press and accused him of having “one of the most hostile press administrations in the world.” He asserted: "We have an administration that is as hostile as Richard Nixon's and we've tried to push back and it's guys like Jon Stewart who let him get away with it."
By Tom Blumer | July 25, 2015 | 10:41 AM EDT
I'm virtually certain that he wouldn't dream of it, but the Associated Press's Josh Lederman seriously needs to consider correcting two extremely embarrassing paragraphs he wrote in his coverage of President Obama's appearance on Jon Stewart's Daily Show earlier this week.
At the 15:03 mark of the Comedy Central video following the jump, Obama treated Stewart as if he's a legitimate journalist, telling him that "It's not your job to focus on the three-quarters of a loaf or half a loaf that we get. Your job is to point out what we still haven't gotten." Actually, after enduring the video, it seems far more correct to say that Stewart's job was to make it look like he was challenging Obama by giving him a bit of grief several minutes earlier about the still-scandalous situation at the Veterans Administration, and then to give him a virtual open mic the rest of the way. But I digress.
Professor: Stewart, Colbert Could Have Taught Obama That Conservatives Are ‘Immune to the Force of Reason’
By Tom Johnson | July 24, 2015 | 5:45 PM EDT One year ago, a British newspaper published a list of President Obama’s ten favorite television shows (the top three, in reverse order: Breaking Bad, The Wire, and M*A*S*H). Not on the list was The Daily Show, on which Obama guested yet again this past Tuesday, but Penn State's Sophia McClennen thinks that if Obama had been more of a TDS fan, he long ago would have realized how irrational his conservative opposition was.
In a Friday article for Salon, McClennen asserted that Stewart and Stephen Colbert “had insight into U.S. politics Obama never seemed to understand. ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ were one of the main sources of truth telling about U.S. politics and the nature of the Republican Party before and during the Obama presidency.” Those programs, wrote McClennen, illuminated “the twisted thinking, hubris, disdain for large segments of society, and closed-mindedness that forms the common, core mind-set of Fox viewers.”
By Geoffrey Dickens | July 22, 2015 | 1:06 PM EDT
Barack Obama outrageously denied there was anything scandalous about the IRS-Tea Party controversy in his Tuesday interview on The Daily Show as he lectured Jon Stewart that: “When there was that problem with the I.R.S. everybody jumped, including you...you got this back office and they’re going after the Tea Party. Well it turned out no.” Obama went on to assert “the truth of the matter is there was not some big conspiracy there.”
By Scott Whitlock | July 22, 2015 | 12:32 PM EDT
All three networks on Wednesday hyped Barack Obama's final appearance on The Daily Show, but it was CBS that offered the most nostalgic coverage. This Morning's Vladimir Duthiers reminisced: "Like two old friends just enjoying each other's company, Tuesday night, Jon Stewart and President Obama both reflected on the approaching conclusion of their careers." He hyped a clip of Obama gushing: "I'm issuing a new executive order that Jon Stewart cannot leave the show." Co-host Gayle King was amused: "This morning President Obama has a plan to make Jon Stewart stay put."
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 22, 2015 | 8:07 AM EDT
During his final appearance Tuesday night on the Daily Show, with Jon Stewart as host, President Obama was treated to a softball interview in which the retiring Comedy Central host worried: “Are we [the media] demanding too much of you?” Stewart clearly seemed to sympathize with Obama over his poor relationship with the press and spoke of Obama's “frustration sometimes with the media -- is the media, myself included, are we focused on the wrong things?”
By Tom Johnson | July 15, 2015 | 1:48 PM EDT
The Miracle on Ice and Hoosiers aside, the underdog usually loses, and Penn State's Sophia McClennen speculates that it’s happened again: Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show because he’s “exhausted” and "dejected" from battling Roger Ailes and the Fox News juggernaut. “Could Stewart really be giving up his show due to Fox News fatigue?” wondered McClennen in a Wednesday article for Salon. “It’s time to take seriously the idea that Fox News killed the greatest satire show of our nation’s history.”
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 2, 2015 | 9:12 AM EDT
Liberal New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sat down for a friendly interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart on Wednesday night and the two eagerly took turns bashing Republican members of Congress for being “cynical” for disagreeing with liberal policy positions. Gillibrand accused the GOP of lacking “empathy” to which Stewart asked if it was “pathological though? Do you think they have mental problems?”
By Tom Blumer | June 11, 2015 | 11:50 PM EDT
If you're Comedy Central's Jon Stewart, you know you have to do the occasional segment going after the establishment press or left-wing groups to maintain appearances.
The James O'Keefe-ACORN saga in 2009 was one such instance. If Stewart hadn't dealt with it, his pretense of being supposedly fair to both left and right would have been blown out of the water. The incredibly petty New York Times reports on Marco Rubio's traffic tickets and finances fit the media version of the "We'd better do something with this or else" template. The video which follows the jump shows that Stewart only had a pair of strong moments, while missing at least a couple of key opportunities to make important points with humor.
By Geoffrey Dickens | June 4, 2015 | 10:00 AM EDT
If his 2012 presidential run is any indicator, Rick Perry’s jump into the 2016 presidential race will bring about a flurry of the liberal media’s favorite pejoratives to hit Republicans with. Racist? Anti-science? Religious bigot? Gun nut? Heartless cutter of programs for the poor? You name it, the former Texas governor was called it by his haters in the leftist press.
By Connor Williams | May 27, 2015 | 11:33 AM EDT
Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul stopped by for a visit on the May 26 edition of the Daily Show, where host Jon Stewart attacked the Kentucky senator for his position on religious liberty. Stewart argued that Christians already serve sinners anyway, so serving gay weddings shouldn’t be any different: